The iPhone was a tipping point for social media, enabling immediate sharing of life events with loved ones. But with so many different networks now drawing our attention, what we really need is an app to pull them all together in one place. That’s the concept behind Moment.me, which tries to be an aggregator for photos, videos, and tweets pulled from Facebook, Twitter, and other services, presenting them in a real-time, multi-point of view layout, neatly organized by event.
Or rather, that’s what it’s supposed to do. While I’m not the most active social networker, I do post frequently to Twitter, which is magically fed to Facebook, where I tend to upload photos to share with family and friends (the app also integrates Instagram and Google+ accounts). Moment.me presents information in four tabs: Feed, Trending, Nearby, and Me. The middle options pull content from popular or nearby activity, but Feed is supposed to be reserved for activity shared with others in your social network.
For several days after installing the app, this screen remained unpopulated; when it finally did show a few moments, they seemed to be randomly pulled from Facebook with no rhyme or reason – half of the moments were from people I barely know or have even interacted with online. The Me tab is comprised of two sections: Friends (where you can invite others) and My Moments, which was also initially blank but eventually populated with several equally random Facebook albums. Sadly, the app failed to even pull all of the images from these already grouped events.
Moment.me requires a Facebook account to sign in, which is admittedly not one of my favorite trends. On the plus side, the app does features a slick UI optimized for the iPhone 5, although it’s not a universal build for the iPad. Perhaps I'm not as hardcore a social network user as the intended audience, but whatever the case, Moment.me didn’t have much to offer me -- especially with so little control over the moments it created.
The bottom line. While its mission is admirable, Moment.me isn’t quite ready to make the cut as a social-network catchall app.
iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 5.0 or later
Nicely designed UI with separate tabs for each category. Large photo display with easy sharing options. Content viewable from app or web browser.
Facebook Connect login only. No way to see which of your friends are using app without scrolling through entire list. Takes a long time to populate with data and offers little when it does.
